When we decided to convert our loft into a bedroom that meant splitting the nursery closet in 1/2, giving the loft a closet and the nursery it’s own closet. The closet in the nursery was giant, it was nearly 1/2 the size of the room itself.

I don’t have any great before pictures (this was back before the time of my wide angle lens). So, you’ll have to believe me when I say, it was really big. This shot is from The Nursery side of the closet before it got a makeover. Like I said, huge, but tons of wasted space.

The picture below is of the closet after we split it. We hired out for the framing/drywall installation (worth every penny). We split the closet right down the middle making both closets the same size after the wall went up. After painting everything Ultra Pure White by Behr I ripped out the carpet and put in wood floors. We used left over boards from our upstairs floor remodel, we purposely ordered extra boards for the closets. To read about how we replaced our upstairs carpet you can check it out here. The floors are 5″ hand scraped Hickory from Lumber Liquidators.

After the floor was in I replaced the ugly doors/trim work with pine boards (painted ultra pure white) and hollow core doors from Lowe’s. I did a lot of pinterest closet researching and mapped out what I wanted the closet to look like. Since this was a child’s room I was really into making it useable for my kids i.e. low clothing rod and shelving. While I was making this closet (a long time ago) this room belonged to The Boy. After The Girl was born it became her room, and now, we live in Texas and I assume it belongs to a little boy or girl.

It was great while he was a little baby, but ultimately the system was a little too big for his space in our Washington house (when we built it he had a HUGE room in Georgia). So we ended up using The Madison Changing Table Side bases in each of these closets and making them into built in shelving units. As for the rest of the pieces, we installed a clothing rod in the hutch and made it into a toddler friendly wardrobe for The Boy in his big boy room. We used the center base as a small changing table for The Girl, which she has recently out grown 🙁 This was one of our first builds and I was so sad to see it go, but really happy the changing system came apart so we were able to repurpose everything.

These side bases got screwed into studs in the wall and the floor. I ripped out the side base top drawer and trimmed everything out with a lot of caulk and pre primed 1×2, 1×4 and baseboards.

Next up I worked on the top shelf. I drilled 1×2’s into the studs for the top shelf support and cut the ends at an angle to try and lessen their appearance. I put two pieces of melamine board for the actual shelf and used a 1×4 for the front trim piece. I can’t say enough how much I love using 1×4 boards for face pieces on the closet shelves! Between all these closets , linen closet , and pantry shelvesI feel well versed in making shelves.

After all the trim was installed I patched all holes and painted everything in Behr Ultra Pure White. I ended up painting all my closets ultra pure white, the same color/sheen I painted all the baseboards/trim throughout the house. The difference the white paint makes is incredible, makes the space feel big and light.

The nursery closet

As I said, The Boy lived in this room for a little while before he moved into his big boy room. It was SO.MUCH.FUN to have his clothes down on his level where he could pick out what he wanted to wear! I know that sounds weird to say a closet was so much fun, but it was seriously the cutest watching him pick out his clothes everyday. This closet update had enough of a positive impact on our daily routine that we modified his hutch so he could easily get himself dressed every day (his big boy room didn’t have a functional toddler/kid closet) We recently just switched his hutch into The Girl’s room and made The Boy a new Montessori inspired closet system and we love it (post will come eventually!)

As for the loft side of this closet, I added more storage shelving and less rods for clothing. This is a bedroom closet, but for us it was mostly used as a guest room. If needed, there are ways to finagle some extra clothes hanging storage in both of these closets, but for us this was just the right amount of space/storage, I guess we’ll see what happens when the kids get to be teens and we potentially move back into this house 😉

The loft closet

This is a shot of the loft through it’s transition of getting a closet. Again, we hired out for cutting the drywall out, electrical work (there was one wire that needed to be rerouted), framing, and drywalling. We did all the cosmetic stuff: i.e. door install, baseboards, trim, paint, light fixtures, shelving, etc.

So, there you have it! We were very happy with splitting the closet in half and would totally do it again!

We have two other upstairs closets that we did some remodeling on i.e. replaced the carpet with hardwood, replaced baseboards and painted everything white. Otherwise we left the wire shelving in place. If/when we move back into this house I’d love to tackle the other two closets and figure out a better storage system to hopefully waste less space. The extra long closet is our master closet, and the smaller is the other bedroom closet. I figure these closets don’t warrant a post of their own, but just wanted to share what a big impact these changes made, especially the white paint!

I love the white walls with the flooring! I don’t think I will ever paint my closets anything but white from here on out.

If you’re interested in reading about how and why we converted our loft into a fourth bedroom you can check out these posts:

We’re slowly plugging away at all the upstairs remodel projects! I think all I have left to share is The Boy’s big boy room, linen closet, and master bathroom! After I get those posts up that’ll be up in terms of remodeling posts until we buy another house in the future!

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Hey, we're Dorris & JG. This is where we share our endeavors in all things DIY, home improvement, and general carpentry. Between never ending house projects and building furniture we stay busy chasing our toddler son around. Read More…